


February Words #28: Compartment

by StaringAtTheTwinSuns



Series: February Words (2018) [27]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Everyone Is Alive, F/F, Future Fic, History, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Museums, OT3, Sequel Trilogy What Sequel Trilogy, happy future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 07:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13829493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaringAtTheTwinSuns/pseuds/StaringAtTheTwinSuns
Summary: On the eve of the Republic's Bicentennial, a junior curator has a chance to "meet" her heores when the Millennium Falcon itself is donated to a museum.Alternate, happier-than-the-sequel trilogy future.This was a good idea that was poorly executed with not enough time, and I know it. I'd like to come back to it and do it properly someday.





	February Words #28: Compartment

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last entry in my prompt series for February... and although you don’t HAVE to have read the others, this one in particular will probably mean more if you have.
> 
> I’ve been churning out a fic a day all month, and some of the longer ones especially have suffered for the short deadline. I actually posted this last night my time and took it down after about 30 minutes. I wish I’d had more time to work on it, but the point of this challenge was to write a fic a day, and it’s still the 28th somewhere. So for the sake of completeness, here goes.

~202 ABY~

Myla Shandri didn’t get called into work for many emergencies. Junior curators at the Galactic History Museum weren’t exactly  _ that _ high in demand. But there was something about the way her not-quite-boss-slash-former-classmate looked right into her eyes via holo and said, “This is the find of  _ your _ career.”

She didn’t even bother waiting for a hoverbus, and just splurged for a speeder downtown.

“That was fast!” Callie was waiting for her at the entrance to the museum. “Don’t tell me you already heard?” She grabbed Myla’s arm and pulled her close in a whisper that sent goosebumps all down Myla’s neck and arms.

“It’s highly confidential,” Callie hissed, as they waited for the security droid to ID their facial features. “Which probably means it’ll be all over the planet by lunchtime.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.” Callie buzzed them both into the Department of Military History. “They’re not sure if we get to keep it here, or if it’ll go off to Technology or Spaceflight. But for now…”

The doors to the hangar slid open, and Myla’s heart practically stopped.

“That’s a Corellian YT-1300! I’ve never even seen one in person. Just parts.” The base of the ship was swarming with more senior curators, but Myla dragged Callie forward as far as she dared.

“Curator Rees.” The head of the museum’s trust, a wizened old man Myla had only seen in holos, stepped out of the crowd to greet them with a nod of his head.

And the knot that had been forming in Myla’s stomach worked it’s way to her heart and tightened the strings.

“This is junior curator Myla Shandri,” Callie said. “She’s the one I told you about. The biggest Galactic Civil War buff in the Political History Department. She’s been pushing for a transfer to Military for years.”

Myla tried to shoot Callie a  _ look _ . The head of the trust didn’t need to know she was unhappy with her position—and besides, Political History got its fair share of Civil War relics too. “Sir,” Myla said, “is this ship what I think it is?”

He nodded. “The  _ Millennium Falcon _ . Completely legit, and as intact as anything from that era’s likely to be.”

Myla turned to Callie. “This is Han Solo’s ship! The one they flew against the second Death Star!”

Callie knew that, of course; even if that particular era wasn’t her specialty, she was a historian too, after all.

The senior curator of the Military History Department approached them. “We’re getting ready to go on board. If you’d like to join us?”

And since she couldn’t exactly do it to either of the older men present, Myla flung her arms around Callie and tried not to scream.

***

“How did we even get this?” she asked. There were plenty of relics from the war still around. But the personal belongings of Solo, along with Luke Skywalker’s and Leia Organa’s, were almost always proven to be fakes when they did show. It was probably partly just that, for historical figures, they were still pretty popular. Everyone wanted to think the piece of junk they’d picked up was Skywalker’s blaster, or one of the Alderaanian royal family’s crown jewels.

But it was also that the three of them had sort of disappeared from history. Their dates of birth were in the archives, but their dates of death were almost always question marks.

Myla had seen an old holo, once, of what was supposed to be Leia Organa’s state funeral. She’d believed it for a long time, and felt a little sad at the small size of the crowd and the cloaked figure in the background she assumed to be either Organa’s son or her brother, Skywalker.

But at university she’d learned that even that holo was likely a fake. No one had proven it conclusively, but a lot of the details seemed off. So question marks in the archives it was.

“The ship was a donation from the family,” the head curator explained. “Ben Organa’s granddaughter, I believe? Apparently it’s been rotting in a shipyard for the past five or six decades.”

“And she flew it here?”

The curator shook his head. “Towed.”

And for some reason that made Myla as sad as that probably-fake funeral so long ago.

“They’d obviously been using it as a place to dump their junk.” The curator cleared his throat in disapproval. “A lot of this isn’t from the Civil War era. We’d like you girls to help us sort through it, divide it up. Pull out the stuff with no historical value, and send the rest of it off for proper dating. This is going to be the main attraction at the Republic’s Bicentennial next year. But until then, we need both of you to keep it a secret.”

Myla nodded. She wouldn’t tell a soul. It was her wonderful, beautiful secret. Hers and Callie’s. For a minute she remembered the treehouse she’d made with her brother, when they were kids. She’d liked to imagine that the legendary  _ Falcon _ had been that for Han, Luke, and Leia. Their little corner of the world where no one could touch them.

They started with the cockpit, picking out the obviously more modern junk and packing the rest carefully into containers. It seemed a little bit of a shame, knowing that it would be cleaned up, the pieces the curator deemed most interesting returned not to where they had been, but where someone else thought they should be.

“What about this?” Callie ran in with a formal dress that Myla guessed had come from one of the bunks.

Myla shook her head. “Too new to be Princess Leia’s. Look at that stitching. But Cultural might want it anyway.”

They dragged their containers out into the hallway, and Myla notes sadly how little had actually made it into the “likely-Civil-War-era” crate. There was quite a bit to ship off to other departments, but…

“I thought we’d find more.”

She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice, and Callie rested a warm hand on her arm.

_ Don’t do that _ , Myla wanted to say, but to say that would be to admit why she didn’t want it. They were co-workers. Not only that, but Callie had been promoted before her. Above her. Even if she did return Myla’s feelings, it would be far less of a mess to just stay friends.

“You really love them, don’t you?” Callie’s voice was soft.

Myla laughed. “It’s so stupid, I know.”

“It’s not stupid! How many vintage sabacc decks do I have at home?”

“Forty-one.”

“Forty-two,” Callie corrected her. “You haven’t been over in awhile.”

Myla laughed again, and this time it felt more genuine. “Did you know,” she said, “that some people think Han Solo and Luke Skywalker were lovers? That even after Solo and Organa got together, they all lived together, and Skywalker basically raised their son?”

“That makes sense,” Callie said. “Wasn’t Han Solo kind of a playboy?”

“I don’t know, though.” Myla leaned her head back, against the walls of the ship, and drank in the ancient, musty smell. Had the past smelled like this, she wondered, or was this just the smell of a ghost ship, once everyone she’d loved was cold and dead?

“There are other rumors,” she said. “That Skywalker and Organa were together.”

Callie wrinkled her nose. “Weren’t they related?”

“But they didn’t know that until they were grown. I think it’s sad…” Myla trailed her fingers along the sticky floor. This would have to be scrubbed too, for the feet of a million tourists. Polished to an unnatural shine. “Can you imagine?” she said. “Falling in love with someone and then realizing they were your twin sibling? I heard… I’ve also heard that Ben Organa was theirs.”

Her fingers caught on something on the floor. A crack. A minuscule opening.

“Callie?” she said, before her friend could reply. “I think there’s something under here.”

***

It might have been easy for Han Solo to open these compartments, but for a couple of history geeks whose most athletic hobby was scrubbing the filth out of old laundry, it took the better part of twenty minutes, and left them panting and covered in sweat.

“I don’t think we’d make very good smugglers,” Callie gasped, and Myla had to agree with her.

But once they were open, what was inside made the whole ordeal worth it.

“Myla, look!” Callie reached down into the space and found what looked like a suitcase. “Do you think this still has forbidden cargo inside?”

It was old. Old, and scuffed, and the right shape and color that Myla guessed it dated from a few years after the war.

“It’s not dangerous,” she said.

“How can you say that?” Callie ran her fingers over the clasp, but didn’t dare to open it. “We found it in a secret smuggling compartment! We ought to get a droid to take a look.”

Myla knew she was right, but she nodded anyway. A year or two of training when she was a kid didn’t actually make her a Jedi. “All right,” she said. “But I want to wait here.” It was hard to put her finger on what, exactly, it was. But there was something in these compartments.

“You know what’s weird?” she said, while the droids were running their diagnostics. “You know my brother was a Jedi?”

The past tense verb was like a blaster bolt to the heart, but Myla did her best to keep on smiling.

“Well, they can sometimes… talk to, or see, Jedi that have passed into the Force.”

“Is that true?”

Myla knew it was, because her brother had come to her once. He had been so young—barely a full-fledged Knight—when he’d died, and Myla’s skills were so rudimentary that, no matter how it hurt her to know it, she knew she probably wouldn’t see him again.

“Well, my brother said it was,” she said. “A lot of Jedi do. And a lot of the time, more than one Jedi is there to see them. They do it on purpose, I think. Appear to more than one person. So even the Jedi who weren’t there to see them can… know. That they’ve joined with the Force.

“Anyway,” she went on. “No one’s ever seen Luke Skywalker. Not when anyone else was there to see. Some people say they have, but…” Her voice was getting fast and high, the way it always did when she talked about the war heroes. But Callie, unlike most people, was listening, her body still, her eyes wide. “But no one really knows whether to believe them. Some people say he didn’t join with the Force. That because Han, or Leia, or both of them weren’t Jedi, he chose to die with them rather than to live on forever, alone.”

“That’s sad.” Callie screwed up her face in a frown.

“Is it?” Myla ran her hand over the battered upholstery, took in the probably-original but cracked and definitely non-functional holochess table where, maybe, her heroes had once sat. She wondered if they’d think it was sad, or just romantic. “I think it’s kind of sweet, if it’s true. But some people say they all joined the Force, together. And some think Luke just liked the idea of being a legend so much that he never sticks around long enough for anyone to get proof he existed at all.”

“Callie! Myla!” One of the older curators called to them from the hidden compartments. “We’ve got the all clear for a couple of these!”

“And some people,” Myla whispered to Callie as they left the holochess table and its imagined memories behind them, “think he’s still alive out there somewhere.”

“That’s impossible!” Callie’s voice rang out too loud, and the appraiser droids raised their heads to look at her. “He’d be hundreds of years old by now.”

“I know. But… I kind of like not knowing.” It was, Myla thought, like her favorite story ever had to end. Or maybe that the end was hers to write, anyway she saw.

“You okay?” Callie touched her arm, and Myla shivered at the ghost that lay between them.

“Yeah.” Myla nodded. But they always said,  _ Never meet your heroes _ . It hadn’t occurred to her until now that whatever waited in those containers might not be anything she wanted to see.

“Myla,” the senior curator said. “Can you take this one?”

“Yes, sir!” She was a little surprised he knew her name.

She opened the ancient clasp slowly, gingerly. The droids had cleared these for explosives, but not for falling apart in her hands.

Inside was a folded length of brocade cloth that, when she lifted it up, swirled around her. It was wide, but short enough that it would have shown off Myla’s ankles. Leia Organa had been larger than life, but she had definitely not been tall.

“That’s gorgeous,” Callie said.

“It’s her maternity dress.” Myla was so sure of this that the words tumbled out, even though she had no "normal" reason to know. There was a nostalgia to it… like she was hearing an old song that she’d loved as a kid and then not heard for twenty years.

“Don’t get too excited,” the senior curator cautioned. “Could have belonged to a family member. Send it for dating.”

Myla nodded. But it had belonged to Leia, she was sure.

She folded the dress as well as she could in the cramped quarters. It was already creased from being locked up for so long, but steamed and on display it would be beautiful.

The rest of the box was also filled with clothes—a blue formal gown whose significance was less certain. A tiny pink baby dress that that didn’t seem to have been worn, and probably hadn’t belonged to Ben Organa. And then, at the bottom of the crate, a dress of coarser, far less regal fabric.

Leia had been afraid. And in love. And joyful and sad and just… overwhelmed, when she’d worn this. The rush of emotion Myla got from the dress was… heavy, and her eyes threatened to full with tears.

“That’s from Endor,” said one of the other curators, an older woman who specialized in alien cultures. “Ewok make. I’d bet my career on it.”

“Do you think…?”

“It’s from the battle?” The older woman shrugged. “Couldn’t say. She might have visited again, later. But there’s a chance.”

Myla nodded, and let her fingers linger on the fabric a little longer than she probably should have, before she placed the dress on the to-be-dated pile.

The last thing in the box was a case, made of wood and even older than the container that held it.

“Be careful with that!” Callie cautioned. “It looks really old.”

Myla slid her finger beneath the latch, and opened it to reveal a tiara, set on a faded velvet cushion that had lost much of its cushioning with time.

She couldn’t breathe.

“Is this…?”

“Sweet Force,” the head curator whispered. “Do you know what this is?”

“Of course,” Myla whispered. “It’s the last of the Crown Jewels of Alderaan.”

It was hers, then. Princess Leia’s. A sweet, drowning sadness twanged at Myla's heart. It didn't even have anything to do with the Force. She knew how  _ this  _ story ended, after all.

She didn’t dare to touch the tiara—it was beyond priceless in more ways than one. She just passed it off to one of the droids, and sat there trying to force air into her lungs.

“Hey.” Callie put what looked like a kid’s model X-Wing aside and scooted across the floor, closer to Myla. “You need a break?”

Myla shook her head. “It’s… the sadness, I guess. It's kind of why I like them, you know?” She didn’t really like to talk about this. People already thought it was weird enough, that instead of actors or singers or athletes, she had always fixated on historical figures as a kid. “Or at least,” she amended, “it’s why I like Leia. She lost her whole planet when she was nineteen. And I guess it just feels like, if she could rise above that, and do everything she accomplished, then maybe I could rise above anything too?”

Callie pulled her close, then, in the kind of hug they hadn’t shared since they were students. “Don’t worry so much,” she said. “You’ll get your promotion soon.”

It took a second for her words to even compute—for Myla to figure out that Callie somehow thought she was upset about Callie getting promoted before her. She was, a little… but it wasn’t about the job. “It’s… lots of things,” she said. Like her brother. Like the fact that she still wondered if she’d done the right thing, giving up her Jedi training when he died. Like working with Callie, still feeling the ghosts of that one endless night they’d had together—that had never been repeated, or spoken of ever again.

Callie gave her one last squeeze, and released her. “That’s one of the best reasons to love history I know.” She wasn’t joking. “If you want to leave, I’ll help you make up some excuse,” she said. “But if you want to help me go through the adorably precious childhood of future Jedi Ben Organa? There are plenty of model X-Wings to go around.”

They bent over the crate, pulling out plastic ship after plastic ship, with the occasional misguided craft project.

“They must have been good parents,” Callie said. “To build all these things together. Look.”

She pulled out a metal plate with four wire figures welded to it. They were little more than sticks with washer heads and wire arms, but one was shorter than the others: three adults, one kid.

“There’s writing on it!” Myla said. Scratching really, on the base. Like a kid had taken another piece of metal and scraped it against the plate to make his mark. “Ben,” she read, by the shorter figure. “Mom. Dad Han. Dad Luke.”

The entire ship fell silent.

“It’s true, then,” Myla whispered. “They did all…”

“We don’t know that.” The head curator took the figure from her, and rubbed a gloved thumb over the markings. “It’s easy to believe romantic stories, Myla. But we’re here for the truth. All we know is that someone—most likely a child—made this. We don’t know who, or when, or why.”

But Myla knew. It was just about the only thing she knew, or cared about. People could debate whether Luke and Leia had really been the children of Darth Vader, or whether Han had really been owed a Wookiee life debt. People could keep marking question marks by “date of death” in the archives, or posting blurry holos to the net, or pretending to be some long-lost descendant of a sibling Ben Organa had never had.

But maybe what Myla loved the most about Skywalker, Organa, and Solo, was that no matter what happened, they loved each other. None of the stories contradicted that. Not even after two hundred years.

***

Their work done, the more senior curators loaded the cargo bins into their speeder. They'd go off for dating, and then the ones that past the test would be shined up for the Bicentennial.

"This is so exciting!" Callie squeezed Myla's shoulder. Like she didn't even know--or didn't care--what kind of feelings that brought up.

"Excuse me, miss?" One of the appraiser droids rolled up to her. "This was left among the rubble," it said. "My sensors determined it to be functional. However, I cannot get it to start."

"What is this?" Myla turned it over in her hand. It was a cold metal cube, less than a handspan wide on each side.

"It looks like some kind of recorder," Callie said.

There were no buttons, no switches, no external interface of any kind.

"It's junk," one of the older curators said. "Keep it if you want. Take it home."

_ That's not right, _ Myla thought, but the words stuck in her throat. If she had her way, all of this would end up in the museum. But in reality, she knew, only a few treasured tidbits would make it to any place where visitors could actually see them.

_ Use the Force. _

It was a whisper. In her ear, or in her mind.

"I can't," she whispered. "I'm not a Jedi."

But the unfamiliar voice said,  _ Do it. Try. _

She turned the cube in her hand. She touched its inner workings with the Force.

_ There. _

It was a simple enough switch--locked away behind soldered sides, but just a switch, after all.

Myla pushed it.

***

The hologram swelled into life--not quite life size, but large enough to fill the room.

"Is this thing on?" One of the figures leaned in, squinted at Myla and Callie.

Myla jumped back. She'd never expected to be stared in the face by one of her idols.

He was older than he was in any of the holos, grey and grizzled and leaning forward on the arms of a repulsorchair, but Myla would have known him anywhere.

"Han Solo."

She was dimly aware of a crowd forming behind her--the head curator, a group of trustees, a janitor just in for his shift.

"Okay," Han said. "So what're we supposed to do with this thing?"

Myla held her breath. This was it, she thought. Their final message. Han Solo. Leia Organa. Luke Skywalker.  They'd put together some... time capsule, somehow. Some message for a future generation.

"It's just a recording device," Leia said, her voice gruffer and less royal than Myla had really imagined. "Make a silly face. Do something naughty."

And she grinned at Han in a way that made Myla shiver.

"Come on, you two," Skywalker chided. "Is that your message for future generations?"

"What message?" Han retorted. "Shoot first, ask questions later."

"Indulge the ones you love," Leia said, with a long, droll look at Luke. "Even if they're being sentimental fools."

" _ Be _ a sentimental fool," Luke countered, leaning on some kind of cane or staff to stare directly into the camera. "No matter how much they laugh at you."

"Laugh at the fools!" Han came back. "You might be wrong, but at least you'll feel better."

Leia rolled her eyes, and looked at the camera, and said, "Love who you love. Don't wait till it's too late to say screw it."

The image flickered, and one of the curators behind Myla said, "Is that all?"

"What a rip."

"Just some family video. We don't even know when it was taken!"

But Myla's heart was beating ten times faster than any living creature's had a right to do.

It was like she had endorsed her. Leia Organa herself.

She turned to face Callie.

How could she say it, how could she explain the feelings she'd had ever since they'd known each other?

"Shhh," Callie said, and pressed her finger against Myla's lips. "I heard it too."

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank all of my readers. Your comments and support helped me keep going this month, get over at least some of my baggage, and finally to repost this after dirty-crying all night.
> 
> I always say I welcome concrit, and I’d be a hypocrite if I said no thanks for this one. But please keep in mind that I created original characters and came up with all the meta stuff in about 48 hours, mostly on my phone on the train... Don’t be dishonest, but be kind? <3


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